Into The Nothingness

He disappeared, nearly naked,

Dressed only in a long white garment.

A white cloth

covered in numbers and geometric shapes.

He slipped into the nothingness,

into some place I will never know.

(If I were to follow him,

the me that can know would have left

and I would be left as naked as he was

unable to understand whatever I was seeing.)

He broke with the language of our world,

and left behind only scattered fragments –

A poetic line

A shopping list

An idea for a story

An argument not fully formed.

He left in a succession of slow breaths

Which carried the old melodies we once sang together,

our voices strong and cracking.

He took with him

A thousand stories we will never hear,

food we will never taste,

so many things I wish I learned,

but I didn't.

His face now appears on maps,

The kind I sometimes look at

but mostly I try to avoid them.

His face is quickly losing its shape

even though the map lines tend to converge.

The story ends

and I cannot contain my wailing.

I am left without numbers,

with only a drone of ongoing pink noise

and a few mechanical glitches

now and then

a kind of broken rhythm,

irregular pulsing.

Bound To The Moment

When he got locked up, he knew it was my fault.  He never failed to remind me, if he wanted some plastic toy from Kentucky Fried Chicken or a new shirt from the skate shop, he somehow twisted every particle in the air between us and then that inner itch began to tickle.  That subtle and yet overwhelming wave of guilt that worked its way in from the extremities until its firm grasp was tightening around my chest. 
I spent 6 years trying to make up for one sentence said to the wrong person. Six years trying to dig my way out of sorrow and regret with money. Shirts, shoes, cigarettes, cds, concert tickets, milk, orange soda, hot dogs, art supplies, a silk screen press, heroin, lots and lots of heroin.
I worked and he spent as he wanted and I knew it was all because of that one sentence blurted out at dawn in the police station. One damn sentence condemned him as a felon forever. A string of words put him in minimum security jail for two months.
When I first saw him in that bright orange cotton pajama uniform and had to pick up a telephone to talk to him through the glass in the visitation booth, I thought I would crumble. I ran around town meeting with lawyers and bail bondsmen, I looked for an apartment and picked classes for the upcoming term.  I went to his court dates wearing the purple paisley skirt he liked and every gemstone I owned for protection. I put the red garnet ring his mother had sent me on my left hand and walked into the courtroom, knowing I had put him there, knowing I needed to get him out.
I did what I could for him, depositing extra money into his ‘inmate account’ so he could buy extra food. I went back to my job and saved money for his bail, I accepted the collect phone calls and then worked like hell to pay them off. 
When he was sentenced to two months I went to visit him faithfully every Sunday. He had been placed at “the farm,” the low security building by the city dump. It was a one story facility without fences or barbed wire, there were cats and peacocks that roamed the grounds. There he was issued white linen pants and a thick jeans jacket. We were allowed contact on those visits and he had me smuggle in cigarettes under my jacket, which I always hated to do.
He got a job in the kitchen and I was impressed when he told me he made a mini mountain made of melon pieces and parsley. I thought that he found ways to make even the worst of circumstances beautiful.  He became the resident artist and drew pictures for the wives and girlfriends of other inmates.  On Valentine’s weekend he presented me with a drawing of a sleeping mermaid with her arms wrapped around a heart-shaped moon.
I would arrive early on Sundays and be one of the first people in line, which was the way I insured we would have the full visit time of two hours. We would kiss and I would wear a skirt and sometimes he would touch my clit and I would leave there sopping wet.
Six months after he got out our troubles really began.  The heroin became a necessity. I lived with the fear of death or jail. I wanted to save him, I wanted to be with him, the guy who drew and made me laugh, but I had not seen him in years. 
I kept trying to make up for my initial wrong, but it just never worked- he only got worse. He was out of jail, but I had never left that one moment, that damn sentence, those few little words.

Poem Of The Dragon

We were all sitting around in a circle in the living room when the doorbell rang.  Bright and clear.  Like Isabel’s voice on green hills. It rang again as I day dreamed. I jolted awake, eager to see what lay on the other side.
Standing illuminated in the glow from our weak porch light was a green dragon. He was not the giant lizard of old fairy tales, larger than ten buildings, but he was taller, thicker, and more scaly than me. Standing at least seven feet tall, I craned my neck backwards, feeling the back of my head touch my back as I stared up at him. I could see my own stunned reflection staring back at me in his glassy eyes. 
I thought that I detected green and scales, smelt burning embers that somehow reminded me of clean wind just above the clouds, but I was most entranced by these smooth yellow eyes.  I sunk into them, for as I said, I could see myself as he saw me, a nervous woman stunned by a creature she had only read about, but I could also see my form as the world he came from would see me.
I was blue and purple, a nebulous shape that was held together only by the tiniest strings, like blowing scarves stuck to a clothesline in spring.  In his world, my flesh had already fallen, my colors were already singing. 
Seeing the mixture of confusion and wonder in my eyes, sensing that perhaps the neighbors would begin to feel that something was amiss, somehow telepathically as nosy neighbors can, he cleared his throat and a few fiery embers escaped his jaws as he opened his mouth.
I shifted attention from his eyes to the tiny bits of flame that rose into the night like orange fairies. 
“Excuse me for that.  I am here for the writer’s meeting.  I am Maurice.  I brought some of my work.  I hope I am not to late.”
For a moment my mouth would not move, I must have lost control as I voyaged into his world. Coming back into mine, I could feel my tongue was stuck somewhere behind my teeth. Pursing my mouth together, I found the little bit of moisture that remained. 
The underlying sweetness of his voice echoed between us, as clear and bright as the doorbell had been.  Like Isabel’s voice on a green hillside. 
We met eyes once again, “Oh yes, come in,” I managed to say, using my best hostess voice.  Opening the door wider and stepping aside, he crossed the threshold, forever entering our tiny world within a world. 
As he passed, coming from the night into the daylight we created, I looked down at his hands, where hands would have been if he were human.  What he had were scaly green arms that ended in long yellowish-white claws that doubled as hands. Using both claws he held onto a thin manila folder, the kind used in offices around the world, which I assumed contained his written words.
It was only a few steps from the door to the living room.  As I followed his thin trail of smoky air, I saw the stunned looks waiting in their chairs, looking the same as I must have.
“This is Maurice,” I announced.  “He’s a writer here for the meeting.” 
Several people nodded obediently, taking the information in, the lifelong schooling in American social politeness not failing them yet. 
“Maurice, I’m going to get another chair from the kitchen for you.” 
Stepping away I could hear the awkward silence beginning, though just as that void opened, it was filled with the steady voice of Chester, perfectly timed to avoid any crash in energy.
“What do you write Maurice?”
“Mostly poetry.  I just started writing really.”
“That’s ok. Everyone is welcome here.”
I walked back into the room with a slightly worn metal folding chair in my hands, seeing polite nods from the gathered writers as the encouraging statement reverberated around the room. 
“Here’s a chair for you.  Let’s kind of... rearrange the chairs so there’s still a clear circle.” 
We took a moment to do this.
I could feel slight tension in the room, more palpable than just the usual bit of nerves that seemed to accompany all the writers that came to our house.  Jen slipped me a nervous look, her eyes were questioning, perhaps looking at me like I understood something that she didn’t, wondering, most likely, what a dragon was doing in our house.  I had no answer, I looked away.
Chester began:
“Ok, thanks for coming everyone.  For those of you that haven’t been here before, we take turns reading our work, or someone else can read it for you if you like.  Afterwards, we discuss it.  When you make a comment, try to give your impression and reactions. Talk about the way it made you feel or if there were any parts that were confusing. In general, try to avoid saying if it was good or not. Stick to how it made you feel.  Ok Jen, do you want to go first?”
“Sure.  This is the second half of the story I read last week.”
She looked down at her lap, to the story that was already sitting there on neatly typed pages, and began to read. Her words went into me.  The same flowing, evocatively descriptive work I was used to. 
Interested in reactions, I looked around the room.  Maurice sat with his eyes closed. The scales between his eyes were ruffled as though listening intently.  Small bursts of steam shot out from his nose in intervals, growing more steady and thick as the tension in her story mounted. 
I looked up and noticed Scott was not watching Jen reading either. His attention was on Maurice, watching his recurring bouts of steam and hiss, entranced as I was. Scott’s eyes were wider than usual as he watched steam evaporate delicately into the middle of the room. Looking up suddenly he caught me watching him, his eyes full of questions. I was as surprised as he was.
When Jen was done reading, I snapped back into writer’s meeting mode, listening as each person gave their reactions.  We went around the circle, taking turns.  Maurice opened his mouth to speak and more orange embers escaped.
“I felt like crying when the baby was drowned by the crashing waves.  It was beautifully described.  I could really feel the emotional pain.” 
There were nods from those around the circle. 
Chester went next, reading in his barely accented voice the short story of one sunny afternoon in his childhood.  Maurice did not close his eyes this time, he stared at Chester, his yellow eyes growing wider as the dialogue unfolded like a sweet smelling flower.  Smoldering smoke came from his ears, slithering up into the air in quiet movement.  Jen coughed, reacting to the extra smoke in the room.  Chester coughed every once in a while, giving Maurice a curious look every time he did so.
When it was Maurice’s turn, all eyes turned towards him. 
“Ok, this is a short poem I wrote a few months ago. I have it memorized.” 
There were nods all around the room.  I felt my heart begin to pound as he readied himself, that uncomfortable feeling in my chest when the energy has mounted and soon we will be at the cliff’s edge.
He closed his eyes, his wide bulging lids seemed to be made of a thin green skin, though I thought I could detect the yellow of his eyes glowing beneath them like little lamps. 
The room was quiet.  The skin around his mouth began to move, twitching as though out of his control.  It went on like this for half a minute and we exchanged nervous glances, for we were not used to silence among us. 
Then the scaly skin on his nose began to twitch as well, joining he erratic bursts of his closed mouth.  A grumble came from deep within him, somewhere in his gut, though it sounded like a call from another world.  He opened his mouth and several deep and extended syllables emerged, through none of them sounded like the English he had spoken to us all night. 
I craned by neck towards him, hoping the gesture would bring me closer to understanding. Just as I did, I was met by a wall of pure fire.  I could smell singed carpet, I saw the black spots of melted nylon. 
I looked at Sophie who sat across from Maurice, her long blond hair now singed to the ears.  Maurice opened his eyes. One final burst of steam rose from his ears. 
He looked around the room.
“The fire comes out involuntarily when I get into a sort of trance state.  I am so sorry.”
“No. No,” said Mike, “I could see that you were really into it.  Must be very emotional work. I have to say though, I didn’t really understand it.”
“Yes, it is not really meant to be understood, just shared.  Perhaps you know what I mean.”
There were nods once again all around the room.  We held another moment of shared silence, taking in the truth of what he had said.
Chester coughed once and then cleared his throat.
“Well, thank you everyone for coming. We’ll be meeting here again in a few weeks. Everyone is most welcome to come,” he looked right at the dragon.
We rose, stretching our limbs.  We all shook hands and I grabbed Maurice’s cold claw as we said goodbye.
“Thanks for coming, hope we see you again.” 
He nodded with a smile,  “Yes, possibly.”
The door closed, everyone was gone. The smell of smoke still remained.

Almost Forgotten

Out comes the rain
playing with the spiders that hide in my thoughts
out comes the rain
washing me out.
pools and puddles
all that blackness reminding me of the leaky drain

rain
wash me away
every part that answers when they call my name

were it easy
were it easy
were it easy the rain might
grow bitter

I remember
when I looked into the moon
and saw them kissing.
We sat in a café as the bright silver plate filled the sky.
And then it rained and I came
Driving through puddles
The freeway was just a long river towards
Blue eyes and a sea hidden by clouds.

I thought the spiders would slip out
But more came in
You pushed them inside me
On those rare occasions.
You pushed them inside me with all those
Cigarettes and the tiny little lies that turned into mountains.
You pushed them inside those places I let you carve.

When you went away
The pools felt like they would not end.
When you went away the clouds lifted
When you went away there was joy
When you went away I opened for the first time.
Caressing the wounds, I let you fade.
And then today- your birthday.
I had almost forgotten.

Has the rain found you
and all those spiders you sent?
Happy birthday,
I am hidden in the clouds,
may we never meet again.

Moonlight Lady

The cheese section was illuminated brightly at the supermarket.  An enormous selection of soft and hard cheeses, swiss, cheddar, brie, goat cheese covered in blueberries or herbs- they snuggled up against an assortment of packaged salami and prosciutto. 
Ethella picked up a few cellophaned chunks of cheese and checked out their weight and country of origin.  As she put the French brie back in its place beside its brothers and placed the cheaper American-made one into her red store-issued basket, she heard the song. It was immediately familiar. 
Most supermarkets play the same songs, about 100 recycled tunes from the last 50 years of rock. This particular familiarity, instead of getting lost in the mire of repetition, struck emotionally, blasting a buried memory into perfect, ringing clarity.  And the cheese, the shoppers around her, the weight of the basket, it all wove into a multitude of threads, experience and perception becoming both more bright and blurry at the same time. Tears came to her eyes and she moved her head softly humming along.

She had a babysitter named Jennifer one summer when she was 10. Jennifer was 15 and had long blond hair and wore red lipstick. She suggested that Ethella and her younger sister prepare a romantic surprise dinner for their parents. They planned a menu of spaghetti and red sauce, salad and dessert, they had Jennifer’s mom drive them to the supermarket to buy the ingredients and flowers. 
At 4pm they started cleaning and creating the space. Ethella set the formal dining table with their nice linens and china reserved for special occasions. The dining room was separated from the kitchen by a decorative angular archway and Ethella tacked a large tablecloth in front of it to block out the view and light from the kitchen. 
Before her parents came home she went to the stereo in the living room.  There was a clutter of tapes and records- none of them familiar to her.  She picked one up at random and put it into the tape player, she listened to it for a second and thought it was perfect.  Smooth, low vocals- it seemed right for a dinner set to candlelight.
Her parents came home. Ethella’s mother changed into a nice dress and sat at the table with Ethella’s father, both of them going along with what the girls had created.  After dinner her mother asked how she had known to play that particular tape, “it’s the most romantic music we have.”  Ethella shrugged, not yet having words to describe intuition and mood.

A familiar song played in the grocery store.  She only remembered hearing the music that one night so many years ago.  She walked through the aisles, past other shoppers oblivious to her joyful tears and open heart.  She swayed her head while singing the few words of the chorus she could make out.

The Lecture

Fall was touching the ‘city on the hill’, interspersed between the mountain’s thick evergreen and redwood forests were yellow and red trees shedding their thin leaves. In the air was the ever-present smell of fireplaces alight and the crisp bite of the air required a thick cozy sweater and, just for pure tactile pleasure, a warm cup of hot coffee.
The sun was just beginning to fade as the doors of the lecture hall were closing for the 6pm class. It was an amphitheater-shaped building where two hundred students could comfortably fit. Pale gray metal chairs with dark gray cushioned seats and backs were arranged in a semi-circle that rose above the narrower main floor, which is where Professor Habiman stood at the wooden podium with his lecture notes. Isa chose a seat in the far back right corner, just four rows back from the wall in an aisle seat where she had a perfect view of the professor.
As the class began, his scrawny teaching assistants handed out the multiple-page syllabus which was stapled in the left hand corner. Isa flipped through the list of required reading and assignments as Professor Habiman outlined the material and course work for Drugs and Society as well as what they would be expected to learn.
Twenty minutes in, Mr. Habiman began the lecture with an overview about the roots of addiction; being a sociology class, he mentioned societal factors including poverty, class, gender, and education. It was then that Isa had something to say. Without thinking, wondering, or waiting, she raised her hand.
Professor Habiman called on her, though it was not the custom (unbeknownst to her) for lectures to be interrupted with questions or comments, which were either asked at specific times designated by the instructor or after the bulk of the lecture. As he raised his eyebrows and waited for her to speak, the full attention of every student in the amphitheater turned towards her. Projecting her voice so everyone could hear, she said:
“Also, I’ve found that Pisces tend to have addictive personalities.”
The class was silent. Mr. Habiman, a man in his mid-50s, with a slight paunch protruding from his button-up white shirt, a neatly trimmed 3-inch white beard and combed back gray hair, stood quiet for a second, seemingly stunned, as though he was still processing what he had heard. Then he found his words.
He looked around the class, gathering the confused attention like a good stand-up comedian, his eyes sparkled and drew the audience into the folds of his emerging joke. Through a faint smile tinged with anger, he replied:
“Astrology? That’s not science. In this class, within the discipline of sociology, we study science.”
He shook his head slightly, shaking off the pitiful comment like unwelcome rain. Isa heard chuckles reverberating around the room as though in stereo sound, echoing without end.
“As I was saying,” he continued, “there are various roots of addiction…”
She sat there, her cheeks burning with embarrassment and anger, her body suddenly more aware of the creaking folding metal seat cradling her form, her feet acutely aware of the cold cement floor. She shrunk slightly and stared straight ahead, hearing nothing but bass tones, seeing nothing but yellow light and muted colors on the periphery of vision. Her cheeks were beyond blush, she was red, sweating and covered in the odor of failure.
Isa sat there for five minutes, for what seemed like hours pushing back stinging tears. The laughter, the quick rebuttal to her theory, the anger in his voice, it swirled through her like a tempest of hurt, gathering speed and fury as she thought about it more, as she fed it with her rage.
As the tears were just about to break the surface walls, she gathered her purse and scarf from the empty chair beside her and quickly climbed the few remaining stairs to the back of the amphitheater. With the raw, aggressive force of her burning body she pushed into the long metal bar (which was the ‘knob’) and heard the quick blunt sound of metal hitting metal.
Beyond the door was a cement stairwell that led to the ground and the night air, now completely black and dotted with stars. She felt a sting as her hot cheeks met the cool air like a slap and she screamed ‘FUCK!’ as she quickly descended the twenty-five stairs. On the last few steps she heard the door close behind her and the yellowish light from inside the lecture hall disappeared.

* * *

The following Wednesday night, Isa went back. Without meaning to, but following a mechanical tendency, she sat in the same place, towards the back right, not too far away from the exit door, in the aisle seat with a clear view of the professor.
The class quieted as Mr. Habiman began:
“Before we get into the material, I wanted to ask, is the young woman here who made the comment about astrology on Monday?”
A girl with short dark hair sitting just one row in front of Isa turned towards her. Isa met her eyes quickly and then looked straight ahead, saying nothing while everyone in the room turned in the general direction of the back right corner and waited. When there was no raised hand they looked around the rest of the amphitheater blankly, searching for a recognizable face. Isa stared straight ahead in silence and was thankful the girl in front said nothing, playing along with Isa’s mute example.
“Well,” he continued, “if anyone knows or sees her, please give her my apology. I shouldn’t have said what I did.”

George Up A Tree

A small man sat on a knoll of dried grass. If he looked closely at the ground he could see a few blades of bright green, but it was mostly a bed of pale yellow, and though he didn’t think about it too much, his body remembered the season and the wind and the reasons the ground was dead.
The hill looked down on a small village in the distance, and beyond the village was the sea. In the late afternoon light, the water glimmered like forgotten jewels. The man on the ground was round, nearly the same shape and color as a russet potato, and he knew it, people had made fun of him his whole life for it. Covering the sloping shape of his shoulders was a red and black checkered flannel coat, which was just heavy enough to stop the gentle breeze that blew through bare branches. He looked up into the branches above him and saw the familiar shape of a young man.
“Are you ever going to come down from there?” There was no answer, just the sound of the wind blowing between them.
After a long pause, he said, “did you hear me George?”
Still, there was silence.
The man called everyone George. He had discovered early on that he could never remember a name, and in the village, it was rude not to address people by name, so being a child and resourceful and creative, he had come up with a simple solution, everyone was “George.”
“Hello George!” he would enthusiastically say to the girl delivering milk bottles.
“Thanks George,” he would say to the gas station attendant. His brother was George, his friends were George, the dogs were all named George.
The old man looked into the tree once again, a wide-boughed oak that twisted and turned in sinister wonderment. There was George, sitting in the thin branches closer to the top. He had been there for nearly three months. Some in the village thought he had lost his mind. Some said it was a girl. But the old man did not listen to rumors. He had been an outcast his entire life, and when he heard about the boy who went to the tree, he packed a small sack full of apples and bread and went to the yellow knoll at the end of town.
“Don’t you think you’ve made your point? Don’t you think everyone gets it? Because they do. We all get it. Come down and end this already.” He was startled by the pleading in his voice and looked around, slightly embarrassed. Still, there was silence.
“George, answer me.”
But George wouldn’t answer. His vow many months ago had been real and serious, and though he smiled at the little round man that had faithfully come everyday to the tree, bringing fruits and bread and nuts and concern, he would not break his vow. He could not, and unfortunately, there was just no way to communicate this.
The old man looked into the twisted black branches and spotted the eyes of George. They held contact for a few seconds and then the old man looked away, exasperated.
“It’s over, like I told you. Just get back here on solid ground, will ya? There’s no need for this anymore, it’s over.”
He said it with authority, with absolute assuredness. There was nothing wavering in his mind, no colors between the spectrum. There was dark, there was light, and nothing in between. And once again, he was surprised by the sound of his voice. And once again, he gave a second thought to his desire. Just why did he come to the tree everyday, bringing food and a simple request?
And though he heard otherwise, nothing was over, not for George. There were more sunsets to come, more sunrises, other days. And there were vows. Simple. Nothing was complete and his task would remain, even after the tree burned, even after his body fell, even after the old man left.

Dancer

Curls of smoke lifted and writhed their way to the yellowed ceiling to leave their own contribution to the collected stain. Morgan watched them as though they were spirits, the agonized souls of the girls around her, seated at their lighted mirrors applying lip gloss and gluing on feathery lashes, their spirits dancing around them begging for attention and as always being ignored.
“What’s got into you?”
Darla breathed out a stream of smoke as she asked. It was she that puffed and puffed on the little Virginia slims giving a pale wispy shape to their souls. Her hair was glossy and black, her lips eternally pouty, her voice deep and sultry.
“Nothing.” Morgan answered dismally and Darla snorted and flicked ashes right onto the top of the vanity, disregarding the green glass ash tray all together.
“It’s not nothing babe. Something’s eating you. You’ve been sitting there staring at the ceiling like the blessed virgin was up there having a clam bake.”
“It’s nothing.” Morgan repeated and shook her head to clear the cobwebs, to clear the curls of smoke.
“Mmm,” Darla pursed her lip and snuffed the cigarette out on the table top leaving an ugly burn on the white Formica. She began to peel her lashes off and put them away in a little acrylic container.
“Well that was your last set. You gonna get dressed or are you planning to walk home that way?”
Morgan looked down at her bare leg peaking out of the crack of her silk robe. Her panties and hose were still clamped in a tight fist at her side. She jammed them into her purse, which was sitting on the counter in front of her and she dared to face herself in the mirror. Hurriedly she wiped the make up away and peeled her own lashes off and took the lift out of her hair. She let the robe fall over the chair and reached under the counter for her duffle bag and pulled out the valure sweat suit stored there, a nice anonymous black number. Having slipped into the bottoms and zipped herself into the top, she tied her hair back with a cloth band and sighed at the pile of crumpled green bills still laying out on the vanity top. She grabbed them up and jammed them unceremoniously into her open purse. She was aware of Darla watching her out of the corner of her eye. She grabbed her purse and put it over her shoulder as she stood.
“Hang on.” Darla said putting the last two finishing strokes into her sleek black hair. “I’ll walk out with you.”
Jack escorted the two ladies to their cars, his massive hands poised protectively high in the center of their backs, one lady on each side of him. Hanging around the back corner of the building on the edge, where the light from the lamp faded, a man in a sweaty white T-shirt under a flimsy windbreaker stood with hands in his pockets. One look from big black Jack sent him scurrying off, away from the girls and into the darkness like an oversized roach. When Darla was installed in her blue Toyota and Morgan was unlocking her own car door the Jack of Spades, as they liked to call him, said,
“Good Night Miss Morgan. You take care.” And he smiled warmly. His voice was so velvety soft with brotherly concern that Morgan had to smile genuinely, not one of those fake smiles that she rained on the gentlemen in the club like plastic Mardi Gras beads all night. Then she slipped into the open door of her battered white Nissan and Jack closed the door for her.
Driving home, she took a detour, a long open ended far out of her way detour. It took her through a quiet little neighborhood with yards and bike paths and windows aglow with light. It reminded her somewhat of the tract of houses where she had been raised hundreds of miles away. She could nearly see herself running barefoot through the yards and skipping rope, and later climbing out of back windows and hitchhiking as far out of town as she could get before a state trooper picker her up and brought her back to her mortified parents. At that time, the idea of escape had been all consuming, getting away from the nowhere and the life that her mother lived, that of an uninteresting housewife whom no one thanked or loved. Eventually she had escaped from the suburbs, when she was old enough to drive herself out and make her way to a big old city. And maybe at first she had felt free, before the electricity was shut off and the realization that she couldn’t make rent on waitressing tips set in. Then she had scrambled to find a gig that made better money. Her parents thought that she was employed with a modern dance company in Oakland.
Parked in front of some stranger’s house, the tears began to flow. Watching the ghost of herself playing ballerina in a driveway. This was escape? This was escaping the fate of her mother? Alone in a huge violent mysterious place where only a handful of slobs knew she existed for a few moments when she was under the lights and they were cramming their filthy money into her g-string. The girl in her railed against the bars of her chest, demanding an escape. Demanding to be noticed, to be freed. Morgan choked back the tears and started the engine of her car again. Her headlights swept over the road ahead wavering as she left the ghost ballerina to dance to an empty street, twirling towards the abyss.

Leaving

A small leather suitcase sits open-faced on a purple and white floral bedspread. Just a little over half full, there are neatly folded shorts and colorful T-shirts stacked in neat little squares. Along the edges are soft balls of black and white socks. A young girl stands close to the bedside. In her arms is a striped sun dress. She presses the garment to her body and folds it, placing it carefully into the suitcase that sits like an open mouth, waiting to take whatever she gives.
The room hold the remnants of a recent childhood. The walls are painted a pale shade of pink. A stack of teddy bears sit in the corner close to a near-empty closet and the dark light of the night is blocked by a red velvet window shade. It is a girl’s room, but the girl in front of the suitcase is no longer a girl.
She is slender and tall, just over 5’8. Long brown wavy hair cascades down her back, looking like the rushing movement of a waterfall. The girl wears a long flowing nightgown with a yellow floral print on a white background. It is an old fashioned nightgown, covering her arms and legs and reaching her collar, but even beneath the yards of flowing cotton fabric, the body of a young woman pushes through, pushing itself outward like a daisy meeting the sun. The fabric below the lacy neckline is bulging with pointed breasts, but she stands in her bare feet beside the bed, next to the collection of little dolls on her dresser, the new woman still swimming through the child-like waves of time.
An older man with a weathered face and graying hair stands in the doorway, it is a threshold he cannot cross. But he stands staring in, looking at the girl he can barely recognize. Who is this woman in a girl’s room? He clears his throat and finally gives voice to his thoughts.
“Gloria, I really don’t know what you’re doing. You just can’t take a bus and get dropped off in the middle of the city. They’ll eat you alive there out there! Come on! You know better than this. You don’t know anybody there, you don’t have any friends there, you don’t even have a place to stay for Christ’s sake! What do you think you’re doing? Are you trying to kill your old man?”
The young girl holds still, then tucks another folded sun dress into her suitcase. She turns to her father. The gray hair by his ears, the sagging skin below his chin, the lines around his eyes, he looks older than he had at dinner. Wherever there was skin, there were worry lines etched into his face, but they had been there for years, slowly getting more and more defined. She looked at him with a small smile, a little bit of sympathy welling in her heart, giving him the smile of the truly innocent.
“You don’t need to worry. I know what I’m doing-”
“How can you possibly know what you’re doing?” he interrupted. “You’ve never been there, you have no place to stay. This is a half-baked plan at best.”
“Look, I’m almost eighteen, I can take care of myself.” She heard a small snort come from him. “I do. I told you already, I’m going to get a hotel room until I can find a place.”
“Do you have any idea how expensive hotel rooms are in New York? Your birthday money is going to disappear like that!” he snapped his fingers and tried to look out the window, but it was covered in a red shade.
“Look, I got to do this. My teacher said I have talent. What better place to go? I’m going to get a job and an apartment and it’s all going to be fine.”
The old man shook his head. He was powerless, unable to stop his daughter with force or words. She just had no idea…no idea at all. He shook his head and looked at his shoes, unsure of what to do next. She turned away from him, picking up another cotton T-shirt and folding it, tucking it neatly into the suitcase, it alone was going with her, into the heart of the city.

A Moment of Difference

The apartment’s living room was a wide rectangle. Across one of the wide sides was an equally long single pane window which looked into the shabby courtyard one floor below. In the courtyard, the circular fountain had stopped flowing many years before, the grass had turned yellow and just the hearty oaks continued to thrive. Daylight was beginning to break into an electric spectacle of brilliant blue. It came in through the unobstructed window and added a tint of dim light to the room.
He sat on the tall wooden backed chair stolen from the kitchen. It was the only bit of furniture in the room. He sat nearly straight, but for the small hunch in his upper back. An unfiltered cigarette hung from his lip, just as they had hung from the bristly upper lip of his father. He took a long drag, holding the cigarette with his thumb and index finger, his eyes rolled across his loot, they rolled across it like a pilot surveying the curvy hillsides far below.
It had been a good night, a productive night. There were a few TVs, one old VCR and three nearly new DVD players. In addition, there were a handful of CDs and a few necklaces. One of them had some pearls on it and he made a mental note to check their worth.
This was what he liked about his job, the tangibility of it all. The rock solid possession. There was no abstraction, no maybes, just good solid atoms that came together to form recognizable shapes. He would sit on the same chair every morning, when the light was just cracking through the horizon, he would sit back with a swirl of smoke and ash about him and survey the bounty.
He likened it to being a hunter and having something tangible at the end of the day, having something to show for the effort, something earthly and real and solid, something he could pound his fist on or throw across the room. It was real and he liked it.
He avoided numbers on a check and their abstractions. He didn’t play around with banks that promised money on little slips of paper. They were all promises, and above all, he hated promises. Promises depended on someone to fulfill them, they implied vulnerability and trust and patience. He dealt only in the real as much as he could help it.
The TVs were real. He could plug them in and watch them or sell them or, as he sometimes did, throw them from the window in a fit of madness. He would watch them splinter and send their screams through the courtyard and he would know they were real.
He had no time for the objectless, for the illusion of accumulation and wealth. The world would not provide for him, the world would not keep its promises, so he made sure to take what he needed. He never asked, he just took.
When he found he needed something, he went out and got it. He took it. He made it happen. The night shadowed his intent and he moved through it like an animal, sniffing out what he needed, finding a way to shift past the obstacles unnoticed and then, as the light changed to blue, he would slink back into his cave, bringing with him the prey he had killed.
He needed… he took. He wanted… he took. There was no need for patience, no need to slave away as a salesman or beneath the hood of a car. If he needed it, he would get it. It was simple. There just wasn’t time for patience, a gentle finesse, or even a polite “please.” It was now or never and he never waited an extra day.
The light came through the window in a brilliant mess of blue, it caught the smooth glass of the TV set and he saw his reflection. There he was, in his chair, in his white T-shirt and rumpled blue jeans and short brown hair.
He saw himself and remembered another. The man he had seen walking past the bookstore two nights before. It was so dark that night, but the man’s white hair was shining in the darkness like a gleaming orb of promise and knowledge. He himself was hidden behind a car on the other side of the street, hidden in the dark shadows of the city, waiting for the perfect moment to take what was about to be his.
But for a moment, he forgot his intent. He watched as the old man walked slowly past the dim illumination of the store’s window. Walking as though there was nothing else to do, nowhere else to be, nothing more important than the one step he was taking at that exact moment. The long white hair fluttered slightly with each step and each one was taken with a deliberate slowness. It was a slower gait than any he had ever seen, almost like a dance of liquid.
For a moment that seemed to continue forever, the man walked, trailed by little specks of white light and a blue trail of dust. The man took the world like a drop of water smoothing a stone. It took more than a moment for him, more than a lifetime perhaps, but the man could ultimately bend the world into the shape he envisioned. It was not now or never, but just a matter of time.

Justice

She sat alone at the wrought iron table, the wind blowing her blond tresses into soft billows around her face. Watching the steam rise from a white ceramic mug, she kept her hands knotted together under the table. Now and then she glanced at the people who passed her by, a woman with a baby budgie, a couple carrying parcels. She waited and waited for the man who had said he would come, but he never came and the steam disappeared and the mug grew cold.
While she waited for him, another man sat in a parked car across the street watching her wait. He knew that Giovanni would not come, knew that the little blonde would sit at the table and wait to no avail. He knew these things because they had been agreed upon.
“She sounded very upset.” Giovanni had said. “She wants to meet me at The Star, you know that place?”
“No, I don’t,” he had said, gripping the receiver as though it would wriggle away.
“It’s a new place in North Beach, I don’t have the address.” Giovanni told him
“It’s okay, I can look it up.” He had answered.
“So now we are even, right?” Giovanni had asked “I am giving you this meeting with the girl and our old grievances will be forgotten?”
“If she’s there, yes.”
“She says she’ll be there. She sounded upset. I made her beg. I told her I couldn’t at first, I admit I was going to let her slip through my fingers and never tell you. But she begged. It sounded like she had been crying. This new man… he probably hurt her. Serves her right. And she comes crawling to me after she had said she wouldn’t see me…” Giovanni’s voice rose wrathfully and he broke off abruptly. After a moment he continued, “She deserves this.”
And after another beat he asked, “ I’ll have no trouble renewing my permits now?”
“If she is there, then you will have no trouble.” He had answered icily, because right then he had been awash with conflicting emotions; the thrill that there was a chance he would see her again, jealousy because she had called Giovanni and not him, rage because it meant that she had never loved him. She had only used him, and with a wretched pang he realized that she must actually care for Giovanni, that he was not one of the men she could use, because like her, he was a rag tag street artist with nothing, but she continued to seek his company.
“She will. I know she will. At three o clock.” Giovanni had said and then he had hung up.
Now with both pain and relish he watched the contortions of her face. Rejection and loneliness swam over her eyes and mouth and made her knot her hands even tighter under the table.
He felt for the pistol in his jacket pocket and thought that maybe this was enough. He looked himself in the eye in the rearview mirror. A man with hard set eyes and a pencil line moustache regarded him immovably. It reminded him of the bills he was still paying so that she could look so lovely sitting there at that table, in the clothing and jewelry he had purchased for her. In fact, he said to himself, she had bled him dry just to make herself more appealing for the next dupe, so she could upgrade and snag someone with even more money than he had. He stepped out of the borrowed car and crossed the street and sat down at her table. He watched the incredible shock spread out over her face. He watched it freeze for a moment like a mask. Then she said,
“Lindsay!”
“Hello. Alice.”
But they both noticed that his voice was not as soft as it used to be, it nearly sounded like the voice of another man, a colder harsher man
She glanced around herself, perhaps to see if her Giovanni was anywhere near, but he was not.
“I,” she said “don’t want to see you anymore. I have to go.” She started to stand, but he drew the pistol out of his pocket and pointed it at her discreetly from across the table.
“Yes.” He said, “You do. But first we’ll go for a drive.”
He stood up and, with the gun still trained on her, he used his free hand to grab her arm and direct her out of the chair. Then he buried the gun’s muzzle in her soft side and with the other arm around her shoulders, he led her across the street and to the parked rental car. For just a moment, he felt his heart stinging again and all he wanted to do was to embrace her and beg her to come back. Then he remembered the windy streets and the weeks of searching and lying awake at night, chest aching. He knew if he gave her a chance she would run away again and this time he might not be able to find her. The little sting was overcome by the numbness and new found hardness within him. He shoved her into the driver’s seat and closed the door before sliding into the back seat behind her.

Questions of Blame

I traveled with my second family, all of us crowded into a small white car, on our way an unknown destination. Older Brother was there and Younger Brother as well, and Wise Father and Kind Mother, all of us together in the twilight of the small compartment. I sat between the two brothers in the back seat, alternating my attention between them, trying to make them look at each other, trying to make it so we would all truly talk together, but it was rare for their eyes to ever meet, even rarer for them talk directly to each other. The road outside was surrounded by long lines of thin trees that swayed lightly in the wind, and the night had a kind of gray quality that seemed somehow familiar.
I turned to Older Brother and addressed him, and since I could only think of serious subjects when I was near him, I spoke to him of destiny and of choice. He immediately responded and we mulled over the abstract qualities of these concepts while the road kept on going straight as an imaginary line and Wise Father listened carefully as he drove. I hoped he would say something but he only chuckled once in a while and leaned back his head to acknowledge a particular point. Older Brother looked under the covering of our mutual assumptions and I pushed when I felt that I had to, and I relented when I felt it was best.
When it seemed that I had talked to Older Brother for too long and I felt Younger Brother growing restless on my left, I turned to him and asked him about his own terrible experiences. He talked to me in measured words, and he had no concepts to summarize what he was saying, no abstract figurations to examine, so he simply told me what had happened, and how it happened, and, to some degree, how he felt as it was happening. He spoke of violent encounters and threats of death and painful marks that would never be erased and sudden moments of conversion when the world turned upside down and the heavy bars of the prison didn’t seem so heavy any more. I listened and asked questions when it seemed that he had skipped over an important moment, and when I asked a question, he would answer in as much detail as he could muster and then he would go on, and he would smile sideways, blowing air out of his nose in a kind of soundless laughter.
Suddenly, Kind Mother turned around from her post at the passenger’s seat and looked at me in the twilight. Her eyes were as sweet and gentle as ever, but there seemed to be a kind of heaviness in demeanor her as well, a heaviness that had never been there or, at the very least, I had never noticed it.
“I feel that you blame me for all that has happened. I feel, in the final accounting, you think that I was the one that caused it all. I hear it in your words. I hear it in the way you speak of thing.”
My own eyes opened wide in surprise since I had never thought these things, I had never blamed her for anything at all. But as soon as she had spoken, my mind started to form shapes around the words that were still hanging in the air between us, and the shapes reorganized my memories at breakneck speeds that I couldn’t follow, and suddenly my memories were no longer the same as they had been and Older Brother had changed form and Younger Brother had also changed form and Wise Father nodded as he usually did and the road kept on going straight through the gray darkness.
“I have never blamed you, not at all. I simply want to look at all the causes, at all the events, everything fits together and to place the cause in only one spot would be to make a great mistake. Causes are like roots, they extend from one event in all directions. Only fanatics grab on to one of the many roots and decide that that is the only one that matters.”
Her eyes closed and opened, and I might have seen a tiny tear rolling down her cheek but it was too dark inside the car for me to be sure. Younger Brother shifted around by my side. He wanted the ride to be over soon. Wise Father chuckled in that way that implied hidden knowledge and Older Brother shook his head. There was something that I had said that he was not pleased with, he might have even heard an insult in my words. It was through him that I had come to understand that insults are unavoidable once distrust has set in like a slowly growing cancer.
I tried to retrace my words, I tried to think of where it was that Kind Mother had found the evidence of blame, the implication that I was specifically blaming her. I couldn’t find the right spot, as much as I looked, as much as I examined. And then I remembered that our language was different, and that more than once someone had said that they couldn’t understand what Older Brother was saying to me, that they couldn’t understand what I was saying to Older Brother, that the words escaped them as if they were all being spoken in a strange unknown language. So maybe she just heard what she was afraid of hearing, and maybe because she was afraid of it, there was a kernel of truth in it. Not the entire truth, for the entire truth was too large to be held in any one thought, in any one sentence. But maybe a sliver of truth, enough of it to make her cry, enough of it to make my past into a different story from the one I had always framed as my experience. Maybe she had maintained a certain structure too long, maybe she had allowed certain imbalances to fester, to grow past the point when anything could be done about it.
Their faces were different now, but the road remained the same. Kind Mother had turned towards the windshield and was staring at the place where the road disappeared in the horizon. There always seemed to be a white cloud there, a bright white cloud that we never quite reached, and yet it always seemed so close.
Older Brother, with his new face and his new clothes, turned towards me once again and he said: “Each of us has to respond for our own actions. We can’t blame others for what we do.”
I nodded and agreed. There was no use asking who we would be responding to or why we were all so concerned with the placement of blame, why when I spoke of causes everyone thought I spoke of judgements and faults. Maybe we didn’t care so much where the blame rested as long as it wasn’t on us.
Younger Brother, with his new face and his new clothes, turned towards me and said: “You used to be my friend. You were my friend first before anything else.”
I nodded and agreed. There was no use asking how he had faded away from me or how I had faded away from him, how he had turned into a living memory that only danced in the distance. He was no longer the Younger Brother I knew and so I couldn’t touch on such delicate subjects. I could only listen and take in what he wanted to give me.
Kind Mother inhaled deeply and then released a deep sob. It was only then that I was certain she was crying. Wise Father turned to her and said: “Don’t worry, mama, we’ll be there very soon. Very soon this will all be a memory. “
I leaned back on the backseat and exhaled softly. It would certainly all be a memory and I now knew what ultimately happened with memories. In the horizon, the white cloud was shining bright, as distant as it ever was. Inside the car, there was only the very faint sound of crying and of soft, careful breathing. Soon this would all be a memory. And then everything would change. Just like it always did. Just like it always had.